Journal of Modern Education Review, ISSN 2155-7993, USA

January 2018, Volume 8, No. 1, pp. 17–26

Doi: 10.15341/jmer(2155-7993)/01.08.2018/002
© Academic Star Publishing Company, 2018
http://www.academicstar.us

Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered

within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Enid Brandão Carneiro Drumond , Almeida Eliane, Rodrigues João, Leonido Levi
(Universidade Trás Os Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), Portugal)

Abstract: Over the last decade there has been an increasing number of engineering schools in the state of
Minas Gerais, Brazil, boosted by new policies of the Ministry of Education and Culture and other government
incentives. Such strategies yielded a significant change in the academic profile of the Education Institutions,
which opened room for the conduction of a study on the geographic profile of the Engineering formation in the
state of Minas Gerais. The study linked the population in each regional unit covered by the Regional Council of
Engineering and Agronomy (CREA-MG) with the number of engineering courses (Civil, Electrical and
Mechanical) allocated thereto. The Engineering schools are not distributed proportionately to the population of the
regions where they operate. It could be seen that the schools are concentrated where industrialization
predominates, mainly in the southern region of the state, where dynamism is linked to integration and industrial
expansion. It was concluded that in order to meet the demand it will not be required to increase the number of
schools, but instead fill idle vacancies resulting from non-enrollment and high evasion throughout the course.
Key words: engineering schools, CREA-MG Regional Units, regional population

1. Introduction

Engineering is and has always been the lever for the progress of a country. It is the formation of basic
scientific knowledge that allows professionals to participate in the several activities of the production chain in any
organized society, besides increasing job generation capacity and improving life quality and income for everyone.
By doing a background analysis on the history of Engineering, Telles (1994) states that Engineering is an art as
old as man, but when taken as organized and systematic knowledge, tested on scientific bases, is relatively new
and can be considered as dating back to the 18th century.
Therefore, one can observe that engineering as formal academic knowledge is recent in the contemporary
world, mainly in Brazil.
The first school that formally delivered a course which could be defined as an “engineering course” was the
École Nationale des Ponts et Chausseés, founded by Daniel Trudaine in 1747 in Paris, France, coming up as the
first reference on professionals certified and classified as “engineers” (Pardal, 1986). This school as well as those
that arose from it formed builders with a general knowledge on the art of constructing, who at the time performed
activities that are today delegated to a number of other professions.

Enid Brandão Carneiro Drumond, Civil Engineering, Ph.D. Student, University FUMEC; research areas/interests: educational
sciences. E-mail: enid@fumec.br.

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

In 1792, while Brazil questioned the colonial regime then in force, in the city of Rio de Janeiro came into
existence the first school of the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Design, which is also regarded as
the first engineering school in the Americas, according to the authors Pardal (1986) and Telles (1994), afterwards
becoming the School of Engineering of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Military Institute of
Engineering. It was only later in 1802 that the United States Military Academy at West Point was established.
The 1828 Imperial Decree set out the earliest professional requirements on the “constructor’s job”, and the
Federal Decree n. 23.569 of December 1st 1933 was the first to recognize and define the engineer, architect and
surveyor activities.
In Minas Gerais, following its mining vocation the then emperor D. Pedro II established the second
engineering school of Brazil in the town of Ouro Preto, which was organized by the French engineer Claude Henri
Gorceix (1842-1919) with a focus on geology and mineralogy, thus becoming a forerunner in Brazil in that field.
After the republic proclamation in the late 19th century, five other engineering schools were created. In the early
20th century and before the 1st World War, Brazil already had 12 engineering schools, out of which one-third
were based in Minas Gerais (Table 1).

Table 1 Engineering Schools Established until 1950

Foundation Location Foundation Name Current
Rio de Royal Academy of Artillery, Fed Univ of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ
1 1792
Janeiro/RJ Fortification and Design Military Institute of Engineering (IME)
2 1874 Ouro Preto/MG Minas School Fed Univ of Ouro Preto – UFOP
3 1893 São Paulo/SP Polytechnic School of São Paulo Univ of São Paulo – USP
4 1895 Recife/PE School of Engineering of Pernambuco Fed Univ of Pernambuco – UFPE
5 1896 São Paulo/SP Mackenzie School of Engineering Mackenzie Presbiterian Univ – UFPM
Porto
6 1896 School of Engineering of Porto Alegre Fed Univ of R Grande do Sul – UFRGS
Alegre/RS
7 1897 Salvador/BA Polytechnic School of Bahia Fed Univ of Bahia – UFBA
Juiz de
8 1909 Polytechnic Institute Fed Univ of Juiz de Fora – UFJF
Fora/MG
Belo
9 1911 Free School of Engineering Fed Univ of Minas Gerais – UFMG
Horizonte/MG
Fed Univ of Paraná – UFPR
10 1912 Curitiba/PR School of Engineering of Paraná

Foundation Location Foundation Name Current

11 1912 Recife/PE Polytechnic School of Pernambuco Univ of Pernambuco – UPE
12 1913 Itajubá/MG Electrotechnical Institute of Itajubá Fed Univ of Itajubá – UNIFEI
Rio de
13 1928 Military Engineering School Military Institute of Engineering – IME
Janeiro/RJ
14 1931 Belém/PA School of Engineering of Pará Fed Univ of Pará – UFPA
15 1946 São Paulo/SP School of Industrial Engineering Industrial Engineering College – FEI
Rio de
16 1948 Polytechnic School Cath Univ of Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio
Janeiro/RJ
Source: Oliveira, 2010.

There are currently more than 150 engineering schools in the state of Minas Gerais, each one of them
offering several different courses. This paper presents a report on an exploratory study conducted within the
Regional Council of Engineering (Conselho Regional de Engenharia-CREA) of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Data were
collected about the schools registered with the council until 2015. Besides the general data, three traditional

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

engineering courses (civil, electrical and mechanical) were selected for the quantitative and spatial analysis of the
schools that offer them, according to the municipality and regional unit in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

2. Methodology

The methodology employed in the elaboration of this paper was based on the quantitative analysis of data
collected within CREA — Conselho Regional de Engenharia e Agronomia in Minas Gerais, Brazil (Regional
Council of Engineering and Agronomy).
As Richardson (1989) points out, the quantitative method is characterized “in both information gathering and
treatment by means of statistical techniques, from the simplest to the most complex ones” (Dalfovo, Silveira &
Lana, 2008, p. 7). It is worth highlighting the data accuracy, since they are numeric and quantitative figures. Thus,
the quantitative approach is herein utilized from the data collected and statistically treated, which were spatialized
through the use of the software ARCGis.
Therefore, the 2015 updated CREA/MG database was consulted, from which the following variables were
selected: schools registered within CREA/MG per municipality and regional unit; engineering graduation schools
registered within CREA/MG per municipality, regional unit and course (civil, electrical and mechanical
engineering).
The gathered data were dealt with on Excel 2000 charts and then exported to the program ARCGis for
spatializing purposes. Upon treatment, the data were analyzed and the relevant discussions were elaborated.
This type of study can be characterized as descriptive, since it seeks to understand the collected data while
establishing a correlation based on the obtained figures. According to Richardson (1989, apud Dalfovo, Silveira &
Lana, 2008, p. 7), this method “is aimed at investigating ‘what is’, i.e., finding out the characteristics of a
phenomenon as such”. .

3. Results and Discussion

3.1 Engineering Teaching Policies in Brazil

Currently in Brazil the role of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has been discussed by considering that
the State has not met the social demands, thus letting the market free to meet society’s needs through the
establishment of private HEIs.
The 1990s saw the start of the process of commodification of higher education with the new laws passed in
1995, 1996 and 1999 providing the sector with higher autonomy in a period characterized by privatizations and
deregulations, thus favoring the growth of private HEIs (Torres, Macedo & Câmara, 2014).
The engineering curricular guidelines, as established by the Chamber of Higher Education of the National
Education Council, set out the procedures to be followed in the curricular structuring of the Institutions registered
within the Country’s Higher Education System under the Law on Guidelines and Bases — LDB (Law n. 9.394
dated December 20, 1996). This law revoked the Resolution n. 48 dated April 27, 1976, of the Federal Education
Council — CFE (now extinct), and abolished the minimum curricular requirements while granting scientific and
teaching autonomy to the education institutions, which contributed to the expansion of the engineering schools in
Brazil from 1997 on.
In this context, a new stratum of the population brought a significant demand for higher education, mainly
offered by the private initiative. This is denominated by Britto et al. (2008) as the “new” student and described by

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

the same author as a public made up by individuals whose families do not have a higher education background,
with low quality formation level, whose perspective to enter the job market is based on their high school grade,
and who generally work full time with a focus on attending evening classes.
Some authors, among which Chua (2004), think that the students and families who pay for their tuition can
be seen as customers, and that quality assessments should take into account the perceptions of different groups of
customers, namely the students, their parents, the teachers and the employers (Bonito et al., 2009).
This new paradigm led to the creation of several HEIs without any care about the curricular grid of their
courses, mainly engineering courses. Such expansion was boosted by an improved financial level of the low
income families, whose purchasing power was increased thanks to the government social policies. This scenario
left aside the professional qualifications of engineering graduates, without any concerns about the job market, but
instead focusing on increasing the number of graduated individuals in Brazil. The government policies resulted in
increased access to funding by the population as well as stronger economic power. Also, the number of public
institutions was not enough to meet the higher demand. As a consequence, since 1990 private institutions have
undergone major changes and taken over the market of higher education.
Data from the 2012 Survey on Higher Education jointly conducted by the Education Ministry (MEC) and
Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Surveys (INEP) provide evidence on the boom times.
Over the last 10 years, the total number of enrolments in graduation courses (bachelor, degree level and
technologist) in Brazil has almost doubled. In 2003, the private network registered 2,760,759 out of 3,936,933
enrolments, which represented a 70% market share. In 2012, the total number of enrolments jumped to 7,037,688,
and the share of the private institutions (with 5,140,312 enrolments) rose to 73%. As the goal of the 2011–2020
National Education Plan is to double the coverage of higher education in the country by 2020, the future is also
promising (MEC, 2013).
Since then, despite the various emphases put by the different governments, MEC has thrown special light on
engineering teaching in Brazil and its future, either through specific programs target at updating formation courses
for engineers or by means of policies that drive offer and access to such courses.
3.2 The Engineering Courses in Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil. It is located in the Southeast Region of the country, is
the fourth state in terms of territorial area and the second in number of inhabitants. Its territory is subdivided in
853 municipalities, the largest number among the Brazilian states. It is the second most populous state in Brazil,
with 19,597,330 inhabitants, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics — IBGE. With a
diversified industrial park, Minas Gerais accounts for the third largest economy in Brazil — just topped by Rio de
Janeiro and São Paulo.
In Minas Gerais, the engineering courses and their respective professionals are linked to a council — the
Regional Council of Engineering, Architecture and Agronomy of the State of Minas Gerais — Crea-MG. Created
by the Resolution n. 2 of April 23rd, 1934, as established by the federal Decree n. 23.569 of December 11th, 1933,
and maintained by Law n. 5.194 as of December 24th, 1966, it is an autarchic entity that oversights the
performance of professional activities, as a public law legal entity linked to the Federal Council of Engineering
and Agronomy — CONFEA that operates throughout the country.
The Federal Decree n. 23.569, dated Dec. 11th, 1933, regulates the exercise of the engineer, agronomist and
surveyor professions. The professionals covered by the referred decree are only allowed to legally exercise

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

professional activities upon duly registering their certificates and grades within the Regional Council of
Engineering and Agronomy in the relevant jurisdiction. Therefore, all graduates in the state of Minas Gerais shall
register within CREA-MG before starting their activities. CREA-MG has its territory divided into 12 regional
units (Figure 1). Each regional unit has a coordination office served by a regional coordinator, an inspector and a
representative of the Education Institutions based there.

Figure 1 Regional Units of CREA Minas Gerais

Source: CREA-MG, n.d.

The engineering teaching institutions have grown significantly in terms of coverage and also when it comes
to the number of courses offered. Such growth resulted from a number of factors, such as the rise of different
engineering branches and the increasing number of other graduation courses. It follows the several political,
economic and social cycles of the country where they are provided. With new policies towards fostering and
funding courses in Brazil, the start of the 21st century was marked by this phenomenon, despite its close relation
with the development of each region’s industry, technology and financial capacity. From CREA’s map of insertion
in the state municipalities, it is found that its spatiality can be regarded as satisfactory while taking into account
the total number of schools registered within this Council (Figure 2), as well as the regional borders and the
reference municipalities. However, this study concentrates on those fields of expertise that qualify a higher
number of students (57%) in the engineering courses (civil, electrical and mechanical).
In 25% (231) of the 853 municipalities that make up the state of Minas Gerais there are engineering,
technology and technical schools registered within CREA/MG. And in 62 municipalities there are engineering
schools registered within CREA/MG, being the highest number in Belo Horizonte (18), followed by (12), Uberaba
(11) and Itajubá (10).

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Figure 2 Municipalities Where There are Schools Offering Engineering Courses

With views to carrying out this comparative study, it was necessary to survey the state population, as
distributed across the regional units of CREA-MG, so as to compare it with the number of civil, electrical and
mechanical engineering schools there located (Table 2). It is highlighted that the choice of these three courses was
based on the fact that they are the most traditional in the state, are offered by the oldest schools and gather the
highest number of students among the engineering schools.

Table 2 Population per CREA Regional unit X Engineering Schools

Number of engineering schools Population/schools
Regional Unit Population (2012) per regional unit
Civil Electrical Mechanical Total relation
Metropolitana 3.239.676 3 2 4 9 359.964
Belo Horizonte 2.385.639 10 7 6 23 103.723
Centro-Sul 1.142.940 4 1 5 10 112.494
Centro-Oeste 1.529.611 7 2 5 14 109.258
Nordeste 1.632.759 6 2 2 10 163.276
Noroeste 777.817 3 1 0 4 194.454
Norte 2.024.789 2 1 1 4 506.197
Rio Grande 741.728 7 3 2 12 061.810
Sudeste 2.343.718 5 6 6 17 137.866
Sul 1.303.112 7 7 3 17 076.654
Triangulo 1.036.798 4 10 5 19 054.568
Vale do Aço 1.771.723 8 6 4 18 098429
Total 19.930.310 66 48 43 157 126.945
Source: IBGE (2012), CREA/MG (2015), adapted by the authors, 2015.

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

By considering a total number of 157 geographically distributed across 62 municipalities in the state, a ratio
of 126,944.6 habitants/school was found.
Generally speaking, the organizational model of the Engineering courses has not undergone major changes
throughout the centuries, since they were originally created in an attempt to join “theory”, which bloomed among
scholars of physical sciences and mathematics in the 18th century, to the “practice” gained through the works
executed by the workmen of the time. The educational projects of the HESs in the curricular structuring of the
courses continues to be organized in basic, Engineering basics and professionalizing levels, which prevailed in the
model adopted by the French Écoles founded in the 18th century, with fragmented disciplines usually not
integrated to their insertion and application medium, and which is currently still adopted by MEC. Several
changes have been made to the conception of the engineering courses towards adjusting their curricular structure,
which have given rise to a number of different courses that have little to do with the paramount role of the
profession. In order to keep track of such changes, only knowing is not enough anymore, for it is required to know
what to do with the lessons learned in the courses. In order to analyze the territorial distribution of the civil,
electrical and mechanical engineering schools in Minas Gerais, following are presented Figures 3–5.
Based on the data published by MEC (2013, cited by Oliveira, Almeida, Carvalho & Pereira, 2012), it was
found that from the total number of civil engineering schools operating in Brazil (464), 66 are located in the state
of Minas Gerais, that is, 14.2%. Electrical engineering schools account for 13.5% (48 out of 354 existing schools);
and mechanical engineering schools account for 14.7% (43) of the 293 schools operating in the country. The
graphs below comparatively show the schools as allocated to the regional units. The state capital (Belo Horizonte)
houses the largest number of engineering schools (23); followed by Triângulo regional unit (19) and Vale do Aço
(18). It is worth highlighting that these regions concentrate a large number of companies that absorb this
workforce, and that is one of the reasons why so many engineering courses have been open over the recent years.

Figure 3 Cities Where There Are Schools Offering Civil Engineering Courses
Source: Authors, 2015

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Figure 4 Cities Where There are Schools Offering Electrical Engineering Courses
Source: Authors, 2015

ESCOLAS DE ESCOLAS DE
ENGENHARIA MECÂNICA ENGENHARIA ELÉTRICA
POR REGIONAIS - MG POR REGIONAIS - MG
4 6
Triangulo 5 Triangulo 10
3 7
Sudeste 6 Sudeste 6
2 3
Norte 1 Norte 1
0 1
Nordeste 2 Nordeste 2
5 2
Centro-Sul 5 Centro-Sul 1
6 7
Metropolitana 4 Metropolitana 2
0 2 4 6 8 0 5 10 15
N. ABSOLUTO N. ABSOLUTO

TOTAL DE ESCOLAS DE ESCOLAS DE

ENGENHARIA POR ENGENHARIA CIVIL POR
REGIONAIS - MG REGIONAIS - MG

18 8
Triangulo 19 Triangulo 4
17 7
Sudeste 17 Sudeste 5
12 7
Norte 4 Norte 2
4 3
Nordeste 10 Nordeste 6
14 7
Centro-Sul 10 Centro-Sul 4
23 10
Metropolitana 9 Metropolitana 3
0 10 20 30 0 5 10 15
N. ABSOLUTO N. ABSOLUTO

Figure 5 Engineering Schools Per Regional Units in Minas Gerais

Source: CREA/MG, 2015; adapted by the authors, 2015

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 Geographic Distribution of the Engineering Schools Registered within Crea in Minas Gerais, Brazil

The spatialized results show geographical gaps, since certain courses are only offered in larger municipalities.
In general, the north-center region of the state houses a lower number of schools and shows an uneven spatial
distribution of schools, which characterizes a delay in disseminating these courses across the regional units. This,
in turn, results in a migration of students to the south-center region of the state.

4. Final Remarks

By analyzing the number of schools per regional unit, we found there is no proportionality across the
regional units of CREA-MG. It could be observed that the schools are concentrated where industrialization
predominates. Production is markedly stronger in the Southern region of the state comprised by the regional units
that have stood out for their dynamism allied to integration and industrial expansion.
It can be stated that, if Brazil intends to reach the same technological level as that of developed nations it
should invest heavily on the formation in Engineering. At the same time, the country should try and improve the
quality of these courses by implementing better formation processes and investing in the qualification of the
teaching workforce. It means the country needs to prepare “more and better engineers” towards reaching new
standards, not only in terms of technology but also regarding economic, social and political development.
According to a survey by the National Industry Confederation (CNI) based on the data of the Census on
Higher Education, 57% of the 105,101 students who started engineering courses in 2007 gave up completing
them.
Therefore, in order to raise the number of engineering graduates, at first it would not be necessary to increase
the number of courses and vacancies. The only requirement is developing projects and mechanisms to fight the
high evasion rate, which is currently close to 50%; in this way, the country could qualify double the number of
engineers. It was also showed the existence of 35% of empty vacancies in these courses, even though the
candidate/vacancy ratio is higher than 1. This may signal that creating or improving programs towards filling
these empty places would further increase the number of graduates. An increased installed capacity, which
currently makes around 300 thousand vacancies available annually, would allow the country to surpass developed
countries in the short run through effective actions towards fighting evasion and creating full entrance conditions.
Since an Engineering course requires infrastructure, which must include laboratories and special rooms,
resources could be better used through the establishment of institutions receiving a higher number of students,
thus preventing resource pulverization and dispersion that characterize the country’s predominating model.
Besides that, such practice ends up impacting the qualification quality, since it can lead to the presence of
institutions lacking the required infrastructure.

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